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Ektar wrote to mention an article from Chosun, a Korean newspaper, asking the question why do videogames claim lives? The article is in response to some recenthigh profile gamer deaths. From the article: "Apparently rare overseas, such cases make frequent headlines in Korea. Why? Experts point to the poor environment of the 'PC bang' or Internet cafes that have mushroomed nationwide. Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn."

So, he went 20 days without sleeping? Or hardly sleeping? I couldn't do that. It seems these deaths are at internet cafes. How about these people get computers and internet connections at home? It seems like it might actually cause the problem to become worse, but hopefully they'd actually remember to sleep at home.

actully they do have internet service at home, the only problem is it's cheaper to go to an Internet cafe which has up to date PC's and faster connections then you can get at home.

what they are intended to do is close every now and then so shit like that doesn't happen...naturally they ignore the rule so they can get more money and when people die they just go "Not our fault" and move on.

there's stricter laws in place now that force internet cafe's in korea to close at a certain time &/or kick peo

no male would survive living on his own. Okay so I am the exception but I used to be a baker so I am a poof anyway.

I somehow fail to see how a mere 20 day bad dieet could kill you. Especially since it is merely poor nutrition. Not like he stuffed himself with lard for 20 days. Or drank cappucino's like it was water.

Perhaps he was just you know. One of those people that die young. It happens. Sure if he had taken better care of himself he might have lived but everyone can tell you they heard of this health

"Because they are ADDICTED to the game; and in that sense, isn't it the game's fault? Regardless, the game IS involved, at least indirectly, in the person's death."

No. It's still the fault of the idiot who doesn't have the willpower to take care of himself. Blaming the game for that is like blaming cars or motorcycles when a speed junkie crashes into a wall doing 150 MPH. The vehicle was still "involved in his death", but the fault is his own.

If you're addicted to something, it may not be your fault... but it's your problem. And you're responsible to get the problem fixed. No one is required to help you or make it easier for you.

Our society of no responsibility (created by lawyers, so they can make money off of every single thing that harms a person, every time it happens) allows addicts a whole range of excuses they can use instead of fixing the problem.

Even after you've weened a druggie off the physical dependence they had on their drug of choice, you still have to deal with the psychological dependence.

Former users get cravings just from walking by a building they used to do drugs in, or seeing a person they used to hang out with while doing drugs.

A psychological dependence is much harder to break.

And you're responsible to get the problem fixed. No one is required to help you or make it easier for you.

I'm not sure what country you're from, but some countries have this concept of 'the public health'. You might be shocked to know that in some countries, accepting addiction is not something that the government considers to be in the best interests of 'the public health'.

Not to mention when the destructive behaviors that addicts begin to manifest start spilling over and affecting other people. So while nobody is required to help you, and it is your problem, it is in society's best interest to keep you from wreaking havoc on other people's lives.

People like you deserve to get held down and injected with heroin. It might not be your fault you're addicted, but let's see how easy it is to fix your problem.

FYI- Nicotine is more addictive than most if not all street drugs. Some people quit and some people can't.

Our society of no responsibility (created by lawyers, so they can make money off of every single thing that harms a person, every time it happens) allows addicts a whole range of excuses they can use instead of fixing the problem.

Hey, let's call these people irresponsibility addicts! Then we can blame the lawyers for getting them hooked on quick money for being irresponsible!

On a slightly more serious note, therein lies the whole philosophical conundrum: to prevent what appears to be an easily prevent

Except in the case of video games, as with all other "addictions" that don't rely on foreign substances, it's completely your fault.Why?

Simple. There's no foreign substance being ingested, inhaled or injected. If there are any chemicals being consumed within your body perpetuating the "addiction", they're also chemicals being produced entirely within your body. That's assuming it's a chemical addiction in the first place.

If it's merely psychological, then only you hold responsibility for what goes on in you

### There's no foreign substance being ingested, inhaled or injected.The throuble is that the body is quite good at producing the addiction causing substances all by himself. It doesn't really make that much of a different if you get addicted to some foreign substance or your own body chemicals, in the end you end up with a good chemical imbalance in your body and have great throuble breaking away from the patterns you have learned to produce said substances.

I think it's fair to say the game did it to them. They're kinda like a lab rat pressing a lever to get more cocaine.

Lab rats don't have the intelligence to say to themselves "You know what? Maybe playing a game for twenty days straight isn't a good idea". Human beings do. Or, at least, if they don't, maybe it's a good thing that they get chucked out of the gene pool.

The grandparent had a point. Why shouldn't we hold these people responsible for their own actions? They aren't rats, they are peo

Once you break the physical addiction, you still have a psychological one to deal with.

That is the reason that most addicts go back to using. Not because their body craves sex/drugs/gambling/food but because they can't quiet the mental urge which is constantly saying "i want it."

Yes, some people can quit cold turkey without ever looking back, but some people can't. Not because they're weak willed, but because their brain is wired funny.

I wonder how many of the people opening their mouths and saying "addicts should be responsible" have actually had to deal with an addiction in their own life. Or watch someone very close to them do self destructive things & refuse to stop

### Lab rats don't have the intelligence to say to themselves "You know what? Maybe playing a game for twenty days straight isn't a good idea". Human beings do.

What makes you believe so? Humans might have a little bit more brain then a rat, but they get addicted in pretty much the same way. Its one thing to come up with the idea "plenty of gaming is not good for you", but its a whole different manner to actually stop playing so.

Well, maybe the game didn't, but obviously the gamer's love for (or obsession with) the game DID.

I think the situation is similar to several possibilities to die from drug use, where the real reason for death is not a physiological reaction outside the brain, or even a brain collapse, due to the substance, but rather the fact that the substance keeps you from keeping yourself in a living condition.

As I noted in another comment, this seems to be connected to the cafe gaming environment, which maybe makes the enjoyment more intense (or whatever, I don't really know). If it is that way, then we can just ask(/regulate) the shopkeepers to pay some attention to what their customers are doing.

If a game was released that really, with total certainty, made anyone who played it so obsessed with it that IV feeding always ended up as the only option, then I would think it would make total sense to stop it. It's not unreasonable to think that it would be possible to create something that triggered the general human nervous system that intensely, either.

Before that, it's a matter of distributing the blame. It's reasonable (without more detailde information) to place most of the blame on the poor suckers who died, but that doesn't mean that everyone who would have been able to do something about it, but didn't, should feel good about themselves. If, for example, a MMORPG allows continous login for 48 hours, that sounds like a stupid idea, even from the simple "stop the bots" perspective. If it can stop one or two involuntary suicides, that's quite nice, too.

no, allowing login times longer than 48 hours is not stupid, it isn't the publisher's duty to help players with time management. if anything it would be the internet cafe's responsability to ensure a safe environment and possibly to send people home if they look ill.

I'm not sure exactly where you live, but here in Canada, a bartender or other server of alcohol (if you are, for example, serving alcohol to party guests at your house) can be held responsible for overserving if the drinker in question goes and kills himself or someone else. That's why a lot of bars insist that you give them your keys when you start drinking.

Well, if the child would have been run over by, say, a tricycle and if the teller would have been shot at with, say, a soccer ball, they'd still be alive. So obviously we should replace all SUVs with tricycles and all guns with soccer balls. That would also make traffic more ecological and I would be more interested in sports because there would be no way to differentiate between a soccer championship and an action movie series. Maybe they could even put some exploding tricycles on the playing field, that w

I'm not even a gamer and I can tell this is just another example of sensationalist journalism.

Because. Sensational headlines sell media. Look to none other than human nature. Fact is people don't want to look at mortality face on. We all live on the roulette wheel of chance, yet it's far more comforting to exclude one's self from the equation when in fact they themselves are at fault for their own demise. Not surprisingly, the truth hurts and thus becomes a sensational rude awakening that draws attention to

But nothing that even approaches day/night light conditions won't exactly promote an existance with proper patterns of sleep and hormonal activity. I would venture to guess that it's more likely that it hides the normal signs of not feeling well, as the environment is abnormal in itself.

On the other hand, for that long a period, the lack of some kind of day/night rhythm could mess different signal substance levels up, for real. It won't, generally, be enough to kill on its own, but even VERY bad air won't

I don't know if darkness is deadly, but it can cause an imbalance in your hormone levels which can lead to depression. If you live way up north or way down south where there is much less sunlight during certain seasons, you are more likely to become depressed. It has to do with the way the brain regulates hormones during the circadian rhythm [wikipedia.org] (24hr day/night cycle). So while darkness probably didn't end this man's life (my bet is it was the instant noodles...) it likely pushed him into a more depressed state

Vitamin D is primarily produced by sunlight. Well, technically it isn't, but the chemical processes your body uses to produce it require sunlight(technically, UV light, of which the Sun is the most convenient source available to most people) to function. This is a much more efficient process than getting it in fully ready form through normal food.

As explained in the article, deficiency of Vitamin D is linked to several disorders. While the deficiency isn't known to d

People die all the time while laying in beds. No one publishes an article every time it happens, wondering "why beds claim lives". Yet every time someone dies while playing a game, it's big news. Never mind that they've chosen to go for days without eating, drinking, or sleeping; apparently it was the game that killed them.

While death due to game addiction is still rare, many PC game players suffer from disorders of the musculoskeletal system related to repetitive strain such as pain in the wrist, shoulders and lower back

Anyone would get that way sitting in front of a computer that long. I do. Why blame games exclusively?

I mean, isn't it obvious? The videogame's parents must not've given it enough attention during the early formative years. They probably let it watch as much TV as it wanted, eat junk food, read dirty magazines.

Come on, let's stop passing the buck and put the blame squarely on the Super Mario cartridge and the X-Wing collector's edition CD who had unprotected sex on the dirty matress behind the YMCA.

So are these deaths statistically significant, or could I also claim that it wasn't the game but the simple fact of owning a gaming device? It seems that it's more a case of a few but fairly well publicized deaths. I mean I'm sure there are people who have died do to eating oranges, should we write articles about the horrors of oranges then?

But the Light from the Monitor is the only thing that keeps the Grues from killing you in your basement! Turn of the monitor and be eaten by a Grue, or leave it on and die of Radiation Poisoning... Oh, ours is a Cruel God!

People commit suicide for many reasons. Most of them stupid (loss of love or wealth, failing at something) The gamer suicide probably stems from an unusually strong emotional investment and the subsequent loss of or failure at that which they so irrationally care so much about. It is no different than someone committing suicide over the loss of a girlfriend/boyfriend or for the older the loss of a job. The fact that it was gaming related is just a novelty.

As with anything, there are extremists in video games. Yeah, video game extremism is a little less written about than say, religious extremism, but there are some people who take everything to the extreme. And doing anything to the extreme can lead to serious injury or death, be it gaming, drinking, sports, what-have-you...

Other factors are mentioned by the article; I'm sure they're very valid. However, I suspect these problems are amplified by some other factors that, on their own, are relatively harmless or positive.Basically, people in south asian countries have, on average, very high IQs. The best data I have on South Korea is that the average IQ there is 106 (normalized on UK=100, where the US has an average of 98- http://www.isteve.com/IQ_Table.htm [isteve.com] ). That may sound wonderful, but with a high average IQ you get high IQ

You can't compare IQ across populations. IQ is standardized on a population and then only predictive on that population. If the test had of been standardized on African-Americans, Asians would score below 100. Its all down to how good your culture is at answering the IQ questions picked. The source you picked is a bit suspect as at least one of the authors seems to have a racist agenda.

" In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment." is a quote from R. Lynn's web page, and this is no where near the most blatant.

Now I suspect you didn't go far enough in your research to find this, but just remember that IQ has long been used to justify racial superiority. When ever you see a cross cultural comparison based on IQ please consider the source.

As for the rest of your post, as a psych student I would be very interested to see the correlation between intelligence and obsessive behaviour (of any kind). While it is a stereotype that more intelligent adolescents play video-games, I would need evidence to show that there is any causal relationship.

I'm not racist, I don't think IQ means anything incredibly important and I'm sure it's not the whole picture, and I think your response was lacking. Given that, here's my response.

You can't compare IQ across populations. IQ is standardized on a population and then only predictive on that population. If the test had of been standardized on African-Americans, Asians would score below 100. Its all down to how good your culture is at answering the IQ questions picked.

That's a pretty bold, sweeping assertion. IQ tests aren't perfect, but neither are they arbitrary. I'm going to call you on that. Do you have any sources supporting this? Especially given that ACT/SAT/GRE are largely IQ tests?

The source you picked is a bit suspect as at least one of the authors seems to have a racist agenda.

I won't apologize for a racist, if that's what he is (it's hard to tell), but the fact remains that this is an interesting question, he's one of the few compiling any sort of statistics, and I don't think you've made a good case on why his statistics are invalid. If you have counter-statistics, I'd love to see them. Basically, I think you might be attacking your stereotype of the misinformed racist layperson. I can understand that, since this is a touchy subject, but it's also an interesting subject if we can find a good way to discuss it.

Now I suspect you didn't go far enough in your research to find this, but just remember that IQ has long been used to justify racial superiority. When ever you see a cross cultural comparison based on IQ please consider the source.

I appreciate your point (though I think your suggestion that I "didn't go far enough" in my research was inappropriate- you don't know me, and I'm not calling your credentials into question), but taking this stance hinders any serious discussion about this issue. I don't conflate IQ with superiority, and acknowledge IQ has been mis-used in the past. It's also not what most people think it is, and isn't the whole picture of a person. *But* I think the burden is on you to prove that IQ measures *nothing* given the amount it's used in our society. The military uses extensive IQ testing, and ACT/SAT/GRE tests are basically IQ tests.

As for the rest of your post, as a psych student I would be very interested to see the correlation between intelligence and obsessive behaviour (of any kind). While it is a stereotype that more intelligent adolescents play video-games, I would need evidence to show that there is any causal relationship.

I find this response a little too dismissive. But to respond, I think though there is little non-anecdotal data on this subject to date, there is plenty of anecdotal data, as you mention, and examining the lives of famously successful intelligent people (i.e. Newton, Einstein, Kant) showcases obsessive tendencies. Conflating "famously successful intelligent people" and "intelligent people" to make an anecdotal argument certainly isn't a bulletproof argument-- but personally it's more than enough to suggest that someone should study this. China, however, has to make immediate and important predictions on how their population will react to online gaming, and I think they'd be foolish to rule out a genetic component which is also correlated to IQ out of hand, given the (ample anecdotal) evidence.

There was a time cars claimed lives. This was in the day when it was thought that having a sharp metal pin aimed at the drivers chest and directly connected to the front of the car was a good design feature. Same with regular glass windows and nice sharp metal knobs. Saves you the worry of how to get out of your vehicle after a crash I suppose.

In that way cars killed their passengers although the more accurate claim would be that it was the designers of the car that killed the passengers.

You can say that smoke claims lives (smoke as from a fire) but this again is a fairly direct form. You would not say that love claims lives despite the fact that an awfull lot of people commit suicide over a broken heart.

It is not the gameplay that killed them. If say you were playing a DDR game that just kept getting more and more intense until the user falls dead THEN the game would claim lives. If you played fear and got so scared you suffered a heart attack THEN the game would have claimed a live.

Just taking bad care of yourselve is not the games fault. Sitting motionless in a chair eating bad food is not restricted to gaming. Just ask your average soccer widow.

All these guys seemed to have neglected their body for a prolonged time and were probably not the most healthy in the first place.

One article claimed the 38 year old male in question had existed on a 20 day diet of instant noodles. Eheh and before? Because I know from personal experience that the body can live a lot longer then that on instant noodles. I am willing to bet a few bucks that before he wasn't exactly a 2fruit+veg a day man either. So the real newsstory is, man who neglects his health totally does not live to a ripe old age (38 was once an advanced age for a human to reach)

The other has someone having a 9 hour gaming session? Well I doubt anyone would be able to do that without having to pee and even then so what? I done far longer sessions. Perhaps this person was not the most prime example of the human species? If 9 hours in chair kills you then all this proves that darwin was on to something. You know there are people out there who for fun do 12 hour marches? What about pole-sitting contests?

Nah I am afraid that as I read these stories it is just, not very healthy person dies doing something to extreme. I had an elderly neighbour who died going to the toilet (yeah how do you like to discover that eh?) Apperently the "pressure" caused a bloodvessel (internally) to burst and she bled to death. Going to the toilet is bad for you? No she just was old and that was her time. If it hadn't been then it would have been if she had bend down to lift something heavy. Sad but that is live. No need to make a headline off it.

Do we blame cars when people die in accident? No, we blame the drivers. Do we blame the knife when we accidentally cut ourselves in the kitchen? No, we blame our own carelessness. I fail to see why the death of some goober who refuses to eat, to drink, to bathe, and to otherwise care for himself is the game's fault. Herion addcits always blame the drug and never themselves for their addiction. Addicts of all types fail to take responsibility for their actions as well as the consquences of those action

Take a look at home many gamers there are out there, then look at how many of them die from these kinds of situations. Not that terribly many, right? Now take a quick peak at two of societies most common forms of entertainment, nicotine and alcohol (for those cultures who don't subscribe to those particular poisons, I leave it up to the reader to substitute). How many people dies every year because of those two? And not just from the direct causes (alcolism / lugn cancer) but from side effects such as the users killing others.

So the point is, games are far less dangerous than alcohol and nicotine. Fix those problems first instead of whining about obvious cases of mental illness where society is unwilling to find and treat the people who are sick.

The point Bruce Scheier makes, and I agree with him to some extent, is that the stuff which is terrible but so frequent it's no longer newsworthy is the stuff we really need to worry about. Alcohol, nicotine and driving-related deaths are just statistics these days, but they number in the tens of thousands yearly. Meanwhile, plane crashes and videogame-related deaths are sparkling rarities which make top news, but are far less significant overall.

I admit, I stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning playing PC games, but then I go to sleep for the normal 8 or 10 hours a person would sleep and get up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. However, what these people are doing is completely different, they stay up non-stop, for days and even weeks on end. Of course staying in a room with bad ventilation and a bad air supply (smoking) will cause asphyxiation, and of course staying up for days on end will drain your energy to the point where you can't move.

Shouldn't these cafes just place somewhat generous limits on how many hours per day a person can spend in them? 6 hours seems like more than enough. Besides, I imagine that after a day or so, the body odor would drive some customers away.
As for these places being dark and poorly ventilated, wouldn't it make sense to at least ventilate the place? All that smoke and crappy air must surely cut into the life span of the computers. And oh yeah, into the life spans of the customers, too.

When you're born you must die. One leads to the other, now if I have a choice between 20 hours playing a game or 2-3 years suffering from cancer, I know what I want my fate to be. We should celebrate it not mourn it!

... for their own actions. I mean look, video games can, for some people, I suppose, be as addictive as drugs. Liquor companies are no more responsible for alcoholics than video game publishers are for video game addicts. That is to say, neither video game publishers nor liquor companies are responsible. In the U.S., we've been building this culture of "it's not my fault." Cigarette companies are sued for people dying from smoking, McDonalds is sued for people pouring hot coffee on themselves or getting obese from eating their food.

I'm a big believer in Darwinism and the "not my fault" culture goes completely against it. It's like those stupid warnings on hair dryers that warn you not to use them in the shower. If you protect idiots long enough, they'll breed. That's bad. If a guy is going to spend 20 days straight playing video games and eating noodles, then he should die. There's obviously something very wrong with his genes and that's not a trait you want to pass on to the next generation.

That might sound cold and heartless, but to some degree, you need to be able to follow a basic instinct to survive or you need to be pulled from the gene pool. Protecting all these people from themselves actually encourages bad genes to propagate and it actually hurts the race as a whole.

Oh well, guess I'll get off my soap box, but I just wish people would start taking responsibility for their own lives and stop blaming their bad habits on everyone else.

Well, for much the same reason that automobiles claim lives, collapsing buildings claim lives, defective medicines claim lives, use of illicit drugs claims lives... usually it's because somebody did something stupid. Sometimes they have to pay for it, sometimes other people pay for it. Not much more to it than that, when you get right down to it.

I think I'll revisit my theory on the collective human intelligence.When humans first evolved (or were created, for you religious wackos), there were pretty smart. They used their big brains to find ways to work around the fact that they were scrawny hairless apes whose tiny little teeth and pathtic fragile claws couldn't harm a rubber baloon animal. Because of their success, their population grew.

After a time, they started forming permenant communities where they could sustain their power and influence o

I need to disagree with your comment. Hundreds of adults die on freeways out of MILLIONS. If the same begins to be true for gamers (from poor nutrition, hygiene, etc), then it certainly is a crisis. From TFA, someone who plays games for 20 days straight in a net cafe, REALLY does have a problem. If cases like this grow around the world, then it is a problem.

From what I have seen, Korean society compared to North American society is a lot more fast paced. (I currently live in Korea) This faster pace of life is pushed on by a very high level of competition between people. My Korean friends tell me that they play games to relieve stress and get away from their busy life for a bit. I personally believe that the competition and high level of stress, push a few people to become MMORPG addicts. The deaths may be helped by the addiction, but I believe that these p